


the other side

by joshllyman



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Inspired by headcanon, M/M, and that hour was 5:30 in the morning, i wrote 2200 words in an hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 03:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20988080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joshllyman/pseuds/joshllyman
Summary: These are the moments that Hajime treasures close to his heart, even if they aren’t anything more than the relationship they’ve always had to Tooru. And so he deals with it, in the same way he’s been dealing with it for years now, and then he lies awake in bed at night and stares at the ceiling and doesn’t actually deal with it at all.





	the other side

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by [ m0n0cromea's iwaoi headcanons ](https://m0n0cromea.tumblr.com/post/188268300527/could-you-please-do-some-iwaoi-headcannons-also) and wrote all of this in an hour. So, you know. I hit word count for the day?

Tooru flops dramatically onto the couch, and Hajime merely lifts his arm and lets him cuddle into his side.

“You wanna talk about it?” Hajime asks in a voice barely above a murmur as Tooru worms his way into Hajime’s hold.

His answer is a resounding  _ mmph _ , Tooru’s voice muffled where his mouth is smashed into Hajime’s thigh.

Hajme’s hand finds the back of Tooru’s head and cards through the thick brown waves. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

Tooru will talk eventually, Hajime reasons. He always does. Hajime does the rest of his studying one-handed as Tooru goes boneless under his touch. He sneaks occasional glances down at Tooru, not any more than is reasonable for a friend who is worried about their friend, he tells himself. His fingers don’t stop combing through Tooru’s hair, even when he’s trying to highlight something and struggles to get the cap off the marker, even when several pages of notes slip off the side of his leg and flutter down to the floor, just out of reach. He flails uselessly with one leg and arm for a moment before giving up. He reasons he’ll just study those later.

He thinks that by this point Tooru may actually be asleep, and he risks pausing his ministrations long enough to scrub at his face. He smells like Tooru’s shampoo, now, the same floral and vanilla combination he’s always used. Hajime sighs. It’s one of the smells of home, to him.

“Hajime?” Tooru’s voice asks, small and scratchy. Hajime drops his hand to the back of Tooru’s head again and ignores the small thrill that always accompanies Tooru’s casual use of his given name. He never uses it around anyone else, only when they’re alone in the small apartment between their two universities. 

“Yes, Tooru?” he asks.

Tooru lifts his head, a red mark on his cheek where he’s been flush against Hajime. “Thank you.”

Hajime stares down at him, a little lost for words, and is working his jaw, trying to find a response when Tooru gives him a small smile, a real smile, and slips off the couch. 

“I’m gonna cook us something for dinner. Udon okay?” 

“Yeah, fine,” Hajime mumbles. “Just don’t forget you’ve got your own studying to do at some point.”

“Hard working university boys need a good meal,” Tooru calls from somewhere between the living room and the kitchen, and Hajime shakes his head and gets back to his notes.

\---

Hajime lies awake in bed that night thinking about it.

It’s not a habit he tries to make, lying in bed, not sleeping, thinking about his best friend and also possibly the love of his life (which he recognizes is a dramatic term, but Tooru has never been anything less than the most dramatic force in his life, so it feels fitting enough). It’s just been happening more and more since they moved into this apartment together. They’re in their second year of university now, and Tooru has been Hajime’s one constant since they left Miyagi and headed for Tokyo. And Hajime would like to blame his inconvenient, incessant feelings on that, on Tooru being the only slice of home, of normalcy he has in his otherwise chaotic life, but he knows he had these feelings before they left Miyagi. He was as stunningly ill-equipped to deal with them then as he is now. 

The fact of the matter is, there is no way Tooru returns his feelings. They have shared a casual intimacy for as long as they’ve been friends, even if it had become more private somewhere around middle school. The moments that Hajime counts on: the evenings studying or watching television together on the couch, the nights where one or the other can’t sleep and they ended up curled around each other in the same bed, the mornings where they share elbow room in the kitchen, their routines so wrapped up in each other that on rare occasions when Tooru is gone early or up late, Hajime makes two cups of coffee before realizing he only needs to make one. These are the moments that Hajime treasures close to his heart, even if they aren’t anything more than the relationship they’ve always had to Tooru. And so he deals with it, in the same way he’s been dealing with it for years now, and then he lies awake in bed at night and stares at the ceiling and doesn’t actually deal with it at all.

Hajime sighs and rolls himself out of bed. His phone reads 12:47, and somewhere in the back of his mind he registers he’s been in bed for nearly three hours and has yet to actually sleep, too occupied by Tooru’s scent and the raspy quality of his voice before he’d woken up enough to control it. If he could pretend this sleeplessness were anything other than Tooru-induced, he’d consider just crawling in beside him. And he maybe considers it a little anyway: the way Tooru would tease him (“Hajime, just can’t sleep without me, hmm?”), the way he’d fit into Tooru’s side, Tooru’s arm around his shoulder, his head resting just against Tooru’s chest. Ridiculous, Hajime sighs to himself as he shuffles toward the bathroom, his gaze fixated on his feet. Absolutely ridiculous.

He nearly collides with the door because he’s too preoccupied trying not to trip in the darkness of the apartment, but he stops short when he realizes the light in the bathroom is already on. On the other side of the door, Tooru’s voice is soft and just the slightest bit shaky (Hajime can only tell because he knows Tooru’s voice so well, knows its cadence and timbre perfectly).

“What I’m trying to say,” says Tooru, “what I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I really like you, and I wondered if you returned those feelings.”

Hajime’s stomach drops to his ankles. Is Tooru really awake in the middle of the night practicing a confession to some girl? He’s about to barge in when something makes him stop: a quiet thump, perhaps the noise of a fist being banged against the counter, and he stops short with his hand still on the handle.

“Alright, start again.” There’s the sound of a deep breath being inhaled, then released, and Hajime can imagine Tooru squaring his shoulders and looking in the mirror. “Let me start by saying that I don’t want anything I say to ruin our friendship, so if you don’t feel the same then please don’t worry about it. We’ve been friends for so long, and that will always come first to me.”

Hajime’s brows furrow. Trust Tooru to make a simple confession as dramatic as possible. There’s no one in Tokyo he’s been friends with for more than the couple years they’ve lived here.

The sentiment is sweet, he supposes, even as he worries at his bottom lip.

“You’ve always been the one that I wanted. We’ve been through everything together, and I think the line blurred somewhere along the way, between friendship and love, and now I’m definitely on the non-platonic side of that line and I wondered if you were maybe on this side, too.”

Hajime is even more confused now. They’ve been through everything together? Who is this mystery woman, that Tooru’s never thought to mention her even though they’ve evidently been through so much?

“I guess what I’m saying is that...is that I love you, Hajime. And I wondered if you returned those feelings.”

Hajime can’t help it: a strangled noise escapes from his throat. The door is flying open before he can process anything that’s happening.

“Haji--Iwa-chan?” Tooru asks. He masks his face carefully; Hajime watches as his calculating gaze and cool expression form on his face, and he hates it, hates it so much, even more so when it’s being turned on him, used in conjunction with the name he uses for the world and not when it’s just them. “How rude, Iwa-chan, standing just outside the bathroom while someone else is using it.”

“Rude,” Hajime repeats faintly. He’s still trying to reconfigure his entire brain.

Tooru blinks at him, and there’s the tiniest chip in the mask, an interesting flicker of his eyes toward Hajime. “How long have you been standing there?” he asks quietly.

Hajime’s throat is dry, parched like he hasn’t had water in days, and he runs his tongue over his lips in desperation for relief. “Long enough,” he manages.

Tooru frowns and swallows hard, and Hajime watches the line of his throat as it bobs. “We can talk about it in the morning. Good night, Iwa-chan.”

He pushes past Hajime to head for his room. Hajime reaches out and grabs him by the wrist, trying not to grab too hard but seized with the overwhelming, urgent need to keep him close. Tooru pauses and looks down at where they’re connected.

“Let me go, please, Iwa-chan,” he says, his voice just above a whisper, and Hajime shakes his head fiercely.

“I can’t,” Hajime answers.

Tooru’s eyes are fierce when they meet his. “Hajime,” he says firmly. “Let me go.”

Hajime yanks him closer, too hard, too much, but the end result is their bodies colliding, the force of it enough to push Hajime back into the wall. 

“Tooru,” he says, his eyes flickering down to Tooru’s lips. “Tooru, tell me. Tell me what you said in the mirror.”

“Why?” Tooru asks.

“Just do it, please, dumbass,” Hajime says.

Tooru huffs. “You already heard it.”

“Tell me. Tell me to my face, I want to see you when you say it.”

“Iwa-chan, what has gotten into you--”

“Don’t Iwa-chan me, asshole. Just do what I ask, for once.”

“Fine!” Tooru yanks his wrist out of Hajime’s grasp and throws his hands in the air. “I love you, okay, you shithead? I’ve loved you forever, and I’ve always been too scared to tell you, so there.”

Hajime maybe feels tears forming behind his eyes. He’s not dealing with that right now. “Tooru,” he mumbles. He brings his hand to Tooru’s cheek, and even though the touch is something they’ve shared before, the energy is so different, the air charged around them, that it stills Tooru’s angry shaking. “Tooru, Tooru, I love you.”

Tooru frowns, confusion on his face even as Hajime’s fingers dig in to the skin of his jaw. “You love me?”

“We’re both dumb as hell,” Hajime says. He spares a huff of laughter before he leans in and captures Tooru’s mouth with his own.

The first moment they’re kissing is awkward, because Tooru is still stiff, frozen, not quite believing what’s happening. But Hajime persists, bringing his other hand to Tooru’s waist, shifting so the angle is just right, and suddenly Tooru gets it, brings both hands to Hajime’s face, kisses him back hard and intense, pressing his back into the wall. Hajime squeezes at his hip, brings him closer still, pouring years and years of pent-up feelings into this one moment, and it’s not enough, it’s never enough, but Hajime is prepared to spend the rest of his life trying to make it enough.

When he can’t breathe he pulls away and leans his head against the wall, his chest heaving, and Tooru lets one hand trail down his chest, landing on a pec, clutching at the fabric of his t-shirt.

“How long, for you?” Hajime asks.

“I mean, forever,” Tooru answers. “As long as I’ve known you. I don’t think I had a name for it until somewhere in high school, though.”

“Yeah,” Hajime agrees. “Yeah, me too.”

“Oh,” Tooru says, and Hajime gives another huff of laughter, a wide smile appearing on his face.

“Yeah, oh,” he replies. “Stupid. Both of us.”

“Stupid,” Tooru agrees faintly.

They stay there against the wall, catching their breath, and Hajime tilts his head back down to look at Tooru.

“Were you really practicing your confession in the bathroom mirror?” he asks, a teasing smile on his lips, and Tooru shoves him away, making Hajime shake with quiet laughter.

“Stop teasing me, asshole, I’ve been practicing that for years!” Tooru answers, and Hajime laughs harder.

“That’s...shit, Tooru, that’s really cute.”

“Ugh,” Tooru says. “Stop laughing at me and kiss me more, I’ve only been waiting forever.”

Hajime shakes his head but obliges, happily, leaning in and pressing their mouths together again. Tooru’s on board from the start, sliding his tongue along Hajime’s bottom lip, and Hajime lets his mouth go slack, lets Tooru explore how he wants, just wraps both arms around Tooru’s back and crushes him to himself.

They have to pull away for air again, and Hajime leans his forehead against Tooru’s, sharing the same air. Tooru’s lips are already a little swollen, and Hajime runs his thumb along one, pleased.

“Go back to bed, Tooru,” Hajime whispers. He leans in and offers a short kiss. 

“Aren’t you coming?” Tooru asks, his voice breathy, and Hajime hums low in his throat.

“I got up for a reason,” he points out. “I’ll be there in a minute. Promise.”

Tooru smiles, and they kiss again, and when Hajime crawls into bed beside him a few minutes later, they kiss some more then, too. 

Hajime hopes the kissing never stops.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me about volleyball on tumblr @joshllyman


End file.
